Measuring Progress: Orienteering with a compass.

So, you’ve set some resolutions as targets and are in the trenches making your way towards them, one determined army crawl at a time. Two days in, you feel pretty good about your efforts. An unexpected reaction blows up and sends dust all over your face; you roll to the side and sidle the crater now in place of what appeared to be solid ground. Two months in…you’re a little uncertain that you’re heading in the right direction anymore.

Emotions get involved with things we care about – especially when uncertainty is involved. They have a funny way of swinging us from one extreme (motivated!) to the other (despair!), making willpower unreliable and skewing our perception of progress.

It begs the question: how can we orient on a long and probably non-linear path from point A to point B?

Consider both a yardstick and a compass; each is a tool that can be used to navigate somewhere. 
A yardstick focuses on measuring distance – how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go. A compass, in contrast, guides by direction rather than distance. When we veer off course, we simply realign and continue forward.

Metaphorically speaking, both of these approaches line up for how we can navigate our goals.

The yardstick, in this case, is rigid measurement which often breeds perfectionism and judging ourselves as failing if we fall even a millimeter short of our idealized destination.

The compass approach, on the other hand, transforms our goals in several effective ways:

• It replaces rigid perfectionism with flexible guidance.
• It focuses on agile growth and learning rather than fixed endpoints.
• It allows for course corrections without self-judgment and lessens defensiveness. 
Practically speaking, this translates to shifting from the question of Have I achieved my goal? to Am I moving in the direction of my values? – whether two months into your efforts, or two years.

Sometimes, the process of achieving a goal is slower than we might wish (it certainly does not happen overnight.). Moreover, uncertainty is inherent because not everything is within our control: a job termination, a financial misfortune, a breakup…moments like these are pivotal transitions that leave us scrambling for stable ground.*

When we think we have to figure out everything all at once, the path forward becomes occluded with anxiety and difficult to see. If we try to measure by distance, the numbers loom large and it’s easy to fall prey to catastrophic thoughts.

In such moments we need to reorient ourselves, for the path forward is found through a culmination of small, consistent actions and decisions made day after day. Remember how we can orient to our internal compass and stay steady in following it. We focus our energy on the next small step in that direction, even when we don’t know what the next one will be.

This directional approach naturally aligns with a growth mindset. Challenges become learning opportunities rather than failures, and setbacks are simply moments to reorient ourselves toward our chosen direction.

Wishful thinking can be healthy. It orients us into an uncertain future, allowing us to find hope and possibility in each step. But: it requires many little actions to get there.

Remember: A yardstick measures how far, but the compass in our pocket shows us which way to go.